Social Justice Learning Institute

Some business owners in the South Bay boarded up their windows for a few days this past summer as a precaution when protests over the death of George Floyd were followed by unrest and looting in Los Angeles.

A group of artists and supporters are using the donated plywood from those businesses as a medium for artistic expression, to help raise awareness of social injustice, as well as to raise funds for good causes.

The online auction, Solidarity, takes place beginning Saturday Oct. 17 and runs through Oct 24, to benefit the Social Justice Learning Institute and Claris Health, which both serve at-risk people in Los Angeles.

South Bay residents Chad Drew and Janne Kouri helped organize the event with support from South Bay Artist Collective and Funddeed.

Drew, a sitcom writer and business owner, said “everyone sort of came together and brought their own little piece of it.”

“My initial thought was, how cool would be to get artists to come out that day, and just paint stuff on those boards. But, logistically, that wasn’t something that we could have pulled off in a day,” Drew said.

Kouri founded the nonprofit organization NextStep Fitness, which helps build and operate rehab centers for individuals living with paralysis. This month he took part in the Ride for Paralysis II “Paso Robles to Manhattan Beach,” which took place from Oct. 2 to 8, and raised funds for NextStep Fitness’ goals to help the 6 million people and service members living with paralysis in the United States.

“Walking around downtown Manhattan Beach, and just seeing all the stores paneled up was a depressing sight to see,” Kouri said. “We thought it’d be something amazing if we take these panels and turn them into something positive.”

“What’s your opportunity to promote unity and solidarity and something hopeful and positive?” Kouri said. “We thought this was a great way to allow the artist to express themselves and kind of tell their own story and share their vision about what’s going on.”

Kouri said he reached out to his artist friend Wendy Stillman, who contacted Rafael McMaster, founder of South Bay Artist Collective, to help organize artists for the event. Both have pieces in the auction.

McMaster said the art is on view the week of the auction by appointment only at Resin Gallery in Hermosa Beach, the home of the South Bay Artist Collective.

With the social and political climate, with tension being felt across the country, McMaster said it wasn’t time for him as an artist to stick his head in the sand and pretend like nothing is happening, but at the same time find a way to process his emotions about systemic racism and inequality in America.

“I think it’s important more now than ever, that we express that humanity, that we help each other get inspired, that we look for inspiration,’ McMaster said. “Now more than ever, is when we need more art, more creativity, more humanity, more connection, more compassion.”

South Bay-based nonprofit Funddeed’s goal when it was founded in 2018 was to use a digital platform to pair creatives with causes and charities that they want to raise funds as well as awareness for including events like Solidarity.

“The challenge for nonprofits is definitely filling the fundraising void,” said Funddeed founder Kent Land. “Hopefully, we’ve got a way to help them do that as one additional way during these times when it’s really tough for them to do in-person events.”

Some of the other artists involved in the event include Bo Bridges, Brent Broza, Sabrina Armitage, Drica Lobo, Daniel Maltzman, Janice Schultz, Candyce Fabre and Vienna Pitts.

Drew said several businesses donated the boards including Noelle Interiors and The Strand House.

FIGat7th wanted to support its restaurants and the greater community, so the manager of retail marketing, Leah Ross, created Dine with Purpose to do just that.

“Basically, I created the program so we could invite FIGat7th patrons to get $20 back on dining at one of our 15 restaurants and eateries, including Mendocino Farms, The Melt, George’s Greek Grill and Oleego By Parks BBQ,” Ross said.

“I just wanted to make it really easy, so customers have to spend $50 or more in a single transaction and then they submit the receipt to dinewithpurpose.com.”

Another way for customers to start the process to receive the $20 is by texting DINEFIG at 811811.

“We have a couple of very easy ways for people to do this, and it encourages people to go and maybe get a meal, like a Friday night date night meal or get a Sunday family meal, and spend that $50 or more in that single transaction and get this really great reward of $20,” Ross said.

Ross called the program a “win-win” because customers are getting something and “the restaurant doesn’t have to put any funds to support this promotion. It’s all being done by FIGat7th.”

The reward is in the form of a digital gift card that does not need to be used at FIGat7th, but Ross hopes that people do to help “support the restaurants.”

Owner of George’s Greek Grill Kamyar “Kam” Ajzachi thinks the program is “a good idea for something to give back to the community.

“We always appreciate what they offered to help out, and we are always happy to help out as well,” Ajzachi said. “I think it will definitely increase sales and get more people that don’t normally have the budget to dine out as much because of the whole COVID-19 situation, it will give them a little bit more leeway to be able to dine out and enjoy eating away from home.”

For two decades Ajzachi and George’s Greek Grill have been at FIGat7th. They were fortunate to stay open during the pandemic, only closing when it was mandatory due to “riots and the looting,” according to Ajzachi.

“George’s Greek Grill is a fixture there at FIGat7th, and people love the food,” Ross said. “They love the sense of community that they get from eating there and getting food from there.”

The senior director of marketing for Mendocino Farms, Riki Swindler, was “pleasantly surprised” when she was told about the program.

“We did not have any real heads-up about it, and I think it’s incredible to see the stuff that FIGat7th is doing—such an amazing initiative to support the local community and to help create the dining communities,” Swindler said. “It’s been a great part of our mission since we opened, so we feel very lucky to be partnering with them on this and being able to be part of it.”

Swindler hopes the program will “fuel the fire to bring business back at FIGat7th” to help the struggling restaurants during this time.

“I think like a lot of restaurants, our world was turned upside down back in March and there was a lot of quick thinking on our feet and pivoting that we needed to do so we could continue to be a viable and safe option for our guests,” Swindler said.

“We did a lot of adapting kind of how the ordering worked in our stores. We did a lot of kind of increased cleanliness and safety measure improvements. And we put a lot more focus on kind of rolling out and improving our digital ordering offerings and even coming out with an app during the COVID-19 frames to make it as easy and safe as possible to continue to make food available to the local community.”

Swindler said a “big thank you to FIGat7th” on the conference call with Ross, who replied with a “you’re welcome” and that she does it “for you guys and for the restaurant community.” Ross also uses the app to order at Mendocino Farms.

“There is a Share with Purpose program. It comes when (customers) post a photo of their meal on Instagram with #DineFIGat7th, and FIGat7th will donate an additional $20 to the Social Justice Learning Institute—up to $10,000—that will go toward their response to food insecurity caused by COVID-19,” Ross said.

“When we were looking to choose the organization for the community component of this promotion, we really wanted to benefit an organization tied to both COVID-19 relief and social justice issues. So, the Social Justice Learning Institute really was best for that.”

INGLEWOOD, Calif. (KABC) — There’s said to be many health benefits to gardening, fresh food, exposure to vitamin D and boosting one’s mood are among them.

Nicole Steele, programs manager for Inglewood-based nonprofit, the Social Justice Learning Institute recognizes these benefits which is why she came up with the idea called 100 Seeds of Change.

“100 Seeds of Change was an idea to build 100 Gardens in Inglewood and the surrounding area,” Steele said. “Just in the idea that if we could build 100 gardens, if we got 100 little sparks lit, then maybe that could set a blaze to this kind of healthy eating, active living lifestyle in our city.”

They met that goal about two years ago by building gardens in schools, partnering with homeowners and by building community gardens including the Queen Park Learning Garden in Inglewood.

“When we installed Queen Park, we wanted to make sure that it was a place where people could come and learn that they could grow food themselves,” Steele said.

“More importantly than just giving people food, we have to educate people and give them the experience to understand and learn where food comes from and how food it is grown,” said volunteer gardener Vern Nishina.

The Queen Park Learning Garden welcomes any and everyone to come and harvest and participate in the upkeep of the garden, all for free. The Social Justice Learning Institute provides seeds and plants and volunteers also donate produce of their own.

“I feel like it’s important to have good community gardens within our community in order to provide healthy vegetables, fruits and natural herbs,” said Inglewood resident and volunteer gardener Jamelle Fortuné Turner.

“It probably seems like something small but it sets an example for children and it provides a hub for older people to come and just be amongst nature and amongst people that they can talk to,” Steele said.

Due to COVID, the park and garden area had been closed for some time, but Queen Park Learning Garden is now back open and available to the community 24/7. You’ll find Steele in the garden on Tuesday mornings and some weekend days or evenings.

“Not just because of COVID, but there’s a lot going on in the world, right?” said Steele. “We need to be able to be among community in a safe place and I thought that opening this park back up would be a great way to do that.”

“Inglewood is a great community to live in and to be a part of,” Fortuné Turner said. “I feel like community gardens really capture the essence of how community shows up, what community is and how to sustain community.”

In 2018, the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance (MBK), an initiative of the Obama Foundation, sought out organizations working to improve the lives of boys and young men of color. As one of 10 MBK selected sites, the Liberty Hill Foundation, along with 15 cross-sector partners, is now working to transform L.A. County’s youth justice system.

Recently, we were excited to play a role in sharing the story of LeQuan Muhammad, a young activist with the Social Justice Learning Institute, who got the opportunity to meet his hero, President Barack Obama at the recent My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) Rising! Convening. LeQuan was personally moved by the experience, and decided to write President Obama a personal letter about his movement work, sharing the story of his fight for the passage of Proposition 47, which reclassified certain non-violent felony convictions to misdemeanors, freeing LeQuan’s own father from incarceration and giving him an opportunity at a fresh start.

President Obama was so inspired by LeQuan’s passion and dedication to the cause of youth justice that he wrote him back, inspiring him to continue the fight, not just for himself, but for all system impacted youth in our communities.

Liberty Hill Foundation, in collaboration with many of our California Funders for Boys and Men of Color’s (CFBMoC) partners, was thrilled at the opportunity to apply for an Obama Foundation MBK Impact Community Challenge Grant in 2019. This grant represented an opportunity to bridge the work of so many of our amazing partners here in L.A. County, while also shining a national spotlight on their transformational work.

The awarding of the MBK grant allowed our partners to show the nation that there is no bureaucracy too large for system change work.

Our MBK partners are bridging community organizing, system change, leadership development, arts, legal advocacy, school and community-based mentoring, and so much more to transform the lives of Black and Brown boys of color.

Liberty Hill Foundation, working in collaboration with many of our CFBMoC partners, which includes eleven organizations and two coalitions, developed an ambitious goal to transform the punitive youth justice system into a care-first youth development system.

Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC)
Brotherhood Crusade
Brothers Sons Selves
Children’s Defense Fund–California
Community Coalition
Inner City Struggle
LeadersUp
Khmer Girls in Actions
L.A. Youth Uprising
Social Justice Learning Institute
Urban Peace Institute
Youth Justice Coalition
Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network

Have you ever pointed a flashlight at your hand? If so, it’s pretty easy to notice that light can travel through the human body. A team of researchers led by Rice University scientists have been using this procedure to develop wearable microscopes that noninvasively help in diagnosing and monitoring health conditions that today require a biopsy or blood test.

This groundbreaking research, known as Expeditions in Computing, is not only taking place in the Rice lab of Ashu Sabharwal, professor of electrical and computer engineering, it also is making its way to classrooms in the Houston community.

Using lessons and activities based on this research, the Rice Office of STEM Engagement (R-STEM) staff members visited Sam Houston Math, Science and Technology Center High School to engage a group of young men in the Urban Scholars Program on campus.

The Urban Scholars Program aims to provide male youth of color with opportunities to advocate for themselves and their communities. The students participate in culturally relevant curriculum and receive academic support. The program is part of the Social Justice Learning Institute based in Inglewood, California.

To engage these high school students culturally and academically, the R-STEM team had a series of meetings this spring, building relationships and discussing various issues that impact their community.

The students were then introduced to the Expeditions in Computing research by reading various articles and discussing health care concerns that disproportionately affect their families and people in their neighborhoods. Students gravitated to one of the lessons and chose to take on the Maker Challenge: Build Your Own Pedometer! created by Azka Bukhari, a teacher at Hogg Middle School in HISD.

Using the engineering design process, the young men brainstormed and designed potential solutions to a large problem in their community — obesity. These solutions led to students designing fitness trackers using microbits, which they programmed to count their daily steps.

R-STEM plans to continue to engage these exceptional young men by inviting them to the Computing for Health Program. This program was designed for students to experiment and gain a greater understanding of how medical treatments are changing because of computer science and computer engineering.

Now that students are familiar with the COVID-19 pandemic, they will certainly be interested in programs that focus on solutions to medical problems. Students will have an opportunity to see how various science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines can work together to meet the ever-changing demands of the medical treatment.

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Expeditions in Computing Engineering Research Center (ERC), whose mission is to develop a computational imaging system, called Computational Photo-Scatterography (CPS), that effectively unravels scattered light and facilitates noninvasive bio-imaging deep beneath the skin at cellular-level resolutions.

INGLEWOOD — The Social Justice Learning Institute has created a community response fund to support families experiencing financial hardship during the COVID-19 crisis.

The organization recently received $25,000 from the All Ways Up Foundation to go toward feeding families in Inglewood and the nearby communities of Hawthorne, Lawndale, Lennox and South Los Angeles.

Program managers decided to use the money to purchase 250 $100 grocery gift cards.

“I was able to get extra groceries and that was a big help,” said Laron Allen, who lives in Los Angeles.

Allen said her hours as a security officer have been cut because of the coronavirus, but her bills are still due.

When her aunt told her about the COVID-19 Basic Needs Response Fund the Social Justice Learning Institute had created, she did not hesitate to reach out and let them know what she was going through.

“Something like this is a big help,” said Allen, who was also one of 100 people who received a free laptop. “Now I don’t have to go to the library to fill out job applications and (the library is) actually closed (due to COVID-19).”

The Social Justice Learning Institute is a nonprofit organization, aimed at improving communities of color through education, health, housing and social justice initiatives.

When COVID-19 began spreading in Los Angeles County, community organizers knew it was time to mobilize and jump into action.

“We’re trying to respond to the needs the best we know how. … We’re taking the cue from the community,” said Megan Hayward, the director of development at Social Justice Learning Institute on Centinela Avenue.

Meanwhile, like many other concerned residents, Allen is limiting her trips to the grocery store during the county’s Safer At Home Order.

“I like to buy in bulk. … I don’t want to run back and forth to the grocery store,” Allen said.

Hayward said in addition to food and technology access, the Social Justice Learning Institute is also following up on requests for help with housing and utilities during the current crisis.

“It’s been interesting to see the different needs and respond to those as quickly as possible,” Hayward said.

Residents will be asked to complete the brief COVID-19 basic needs intake form, which will ask community members to describe what they need help with.

Services and financial support is being made available on a first-come, first-served basis.

After an applicant completes the form, a Social Justice Learning Institute staff member will reach out to applicants directly.

Meanwhile, the Inglewood based nonprofit is working on expanding its health equity initiatives.

“We’re hoping to partner with No Kid Hungry to purchase a refrigerated truck,” Hayward said.

The truck would be used to expand the Social Justice Learning Institute’s food distribution initiatives, which provide free, fresh produce, during weekly giveaways at Hudnall Elementary School in Inglewood.

INGLEWOOD — The Inglewood Unified School District has partnered with the Social Justice Learning Institute to distribute 200 bags of fresh fruits and vegetables through May 5 to community members.

The free, first-come first-served weekly Food Forward Community Distribution will take place at Hudnall Elementary School, 331 W. Olive St.

Subsequent distributions are scheduled for every Friday while schools remain closed in Inglewood.

“Our families just need to have access to food,” said D’Artagnan Scorza, founder and executive director of the Social Justice Learning Institute, who also is the president of the Inglewood school board.

Social Justice Learning Center is a nonprofit organization focused on academic, food, environmental and housing justice in communities of color.

Scorza said access to fresh fruits and produce was already an issue for some families in Inglewood, especially those on limited or fixed income.

With the coronavirus causing people to stock up on certain items at grocery stores, Scorza said the program is more important now than ever.

“It goes beyond healthy eating,” he said. “We’re just trying to make sure people have food.”

The produce has been donated from wholesale markets via Food Forward Inc,, a charity whose mission is to fight hunger and prevent food waste by rescuing fresh surplus produce and connecting it with people in need.

This past July, Amarion Martin (Cesar Chavez Continuation High School, Class of 2018) traveled to Africa with a group of 10 students and alumni from the Social Justice Learning Institute’s Urban Scholars program.

During the 2017-18 school year, Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI) was brought by CUSD to Centennial High School and Chavez Continuation High School to work with their male population. The Program exists to provide academic and career development support through a social justice lens. Amarion was one of the students in SJLI’s inaugural class. Because of his hard work in the program, he was invited to go on an all-expense paid trip to South Africa. “I couldn’t believe it when he told me that his trip to Africa was the first plane trip he had ever taken!” said Laura Brown.

The group traveled to Ethiopia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Some of the activities they engaged in include exploring Addis Ababa, visiting the Nelson Mandela Museum, conversing with an anti-apartheid freedom fighter, and visiting Victoria Falls.

Before Departing for Africa, Amarion shared, “ I think it’s a good opportunity to learn more about my roots and where I come from.”

In the classroom, students in the Social Justice Learning Institute program explore a variety of topics including Black male identity, Black history, and the African diaspora. The trip to Africa aimed to provide students with the opportunity to dive deeper by exploring the history of South Africa and ancestral connections to the African continent. The goal is to heighten their critical consciousness and help them see that world is bigger than their day-to-day lives in Compton, Inglewood, and South Los Angeles.

“Through SJLI Amrion was exposed to college level curriculum, visited colleges and universities, and participated in a civic action research project. Additionally, he had mentors from SJLI that advocated for him when he had to go to court; worked as the liaison between him and his teachers; helped him complete college applications; and helped him recover enough credits to graduate from high school with his class,” Brown explained.

Participants gain the tools to not only thrive academically but also to become leaders in their communities. Brown said, “As a result of this trip Amarion, the kid that wasn’t into school, now wants to travel the world! He has volunteered to come talk to students at Chavez about his experience with SJLI. SJLI has opened Amarion’s eyes to a whole new world.”